Today is Thursday, Dec. 11, the 346th day of 2008. There are 20 days left in the year. On this date

December 11, 2008 at 12:00a.m.

Today is Thursday, Dec. 11, the 346th day of 2008. There are 20 days left in the year. On this date in 1936, Britain’s King Edward VIII abdicates to marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson.

In 1792, France’s King Louis XVI goes before the Convention to face charges of treason. (Louis is convicted, and executed the following month.) In 1928, police in Buenos Aires, Argentina, announce they have thwarted an attempt on the life of President-elect Herbert Hoover. In 1941, Germany and Italy declare war on the United States; the U.S. responds in kind. In 1946, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) is established. In 1983, Pope John Paul II visits a Lutheran church in Rome, the first visit by a Roman Catholic pontiff to a Protestant church in his own diocese. In 1997, more than 150 countries agree at a global warming conference in Kyoto, Japan, to control the Earth’s greenhouse gases.

December 11, 1983: The state is working on a financial package that could result in Commuter Aircraft Corp.’s Vienna Township plant being sold for use as an aircraft-rebuilding facility.

Trumbull County’s health insurance cost for its employees will increase 12 percent, from $218 per month to $246 for an employee on the family plan.

December 11, 1968: Nearly 2,500 employees of General Motors Fisher Body at Lordstown are sent home four hours early so workers could “repair deliberate and malicious damage to automobile bodies on the Chevrolet assembly line,” a company spokesman says.

Fire said to be caused by a defective coffee maker causes $20,000 damage to the Crown Vending Co. building on Midlothian Avenue, which is owned by Orland and Ronald Carabbia.

Mrs. Jeannette Craver, 90, prominent in social, political and civic activities in Youngstown and a charter member of the Children’s Service Bureau, dies in North Side Hospital. She was the widow of Alvin W. Craver, three times mayor of Youngstown.

December 11, 1958: Mahoning County Democratic and labor leaders honor U.S. Rep. Michael J. Kirwan and U.S. Sen.-elect Stephen M. Young of Cleveland at a benefit banquet and dance at Idora Park, raising $10,000 for charity.

U.S. Internal Revenue agents seize the home of Frank Cammarata at 634 Belvedere Ave. in Warren against a $5,150 tax lien. Cammarata, an alleged member of the Detroit Purple gang, was deported a week earlier.

Union clerks in Loblaw stores in Youngstown, Warren and Niles refuse to cross Teamster picket lines, closing all the firm’s district stores and idling some 2,100 people.

December 11, 1933: Thomas J. Bray, former president of Republic Iron & Steel Co. and a longtime advocate for a canal to the Ohio River, dies suddenly in his office in the Stambaugh Building on the eve of a hearing in Washington on the waterway project.

With but three weeks more in office, Youngstown city council recommends the most drastic salary slashes and dismissals of city employes in the greatest economy program proposed at city hall in many years. The proposals would save an estimated $100,000.